Updated Dec. 8
This is part 1 in a series exploring the new cocktail and food menus at the historic Mai-Kai in South Florida, est. 1956. The restaurant reopened in November 2024 after four years and a $20 million restoration project that’s still ongoing. First, we’ll take a look at the menu design and esthetics. In future stories, we’ll examine the drinks and the food in depth.
Jump to more below
• The cocktail menu: Welcome back to paradise, 1950s style
• The food menus: A modern take with traditions intact
• The cannibal trio: Mai-Kai’s signature iconography
Since the Mai-Kai celebrated its grand reopening in mid-November, fans flocking back to 3599 N. Federal Highway in Oakland Park have been dazzled by the renovation and reimagination of the 67-year-old Tiki temple. This includes a painstaking rehabilitation of the Molokai Bar, the massive showroom under the vintage 40-foot A-frame, as well as all the surrounding dining rooms and other guest areas.
Much of the interior looks as good as it has since a 1970 expansion project that marked the last major design overhaul. For this, we can thank creative director “Typhoon Tommy” Allsmiller and his team of artists, including Scott “Flounder” Scheidly, Tom Fowner, and Conrad Teheiura Itchener.
• Mai-Kai Restoration & Reopening: Full story and photo archive
But there are a few new additions to this throwback experience that may have escaped notice, right under the noses of many guests. The food and drink menus now boast a retro look and feel that dates all the way back to the early days of the Mai-Kai. Let’s take a closer look at menus, their links to the past, and some breaking news on what’s coming next.
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The cocktail menu: Welcome back to paradise, 1950s style
It’s easy to be swept away to paradise when you open the Mai-Kai’s new cocktail menu and gaze upon more than 50 tropical drinks, many of them classics that have been frozen in time since 1956. But after you place your order for one of those delicious drinks crafted by beverage director Cory Starr and his expansive team of bartenders, take a gander at the menu’s design and artwork.
The cover art and tri-fold format is nearly identical the original 1956-57 menu, which included 43 cocktails ranging in price from 90 cents for Oh So Deadly to $2 for the signature Barrel O’ Rum. Both of those drinks are still on the menu, along with 28 others from that initial grand opening. The prices many have changed, but the recipes remain nearly identical, one of the unique features of the legendary bar.
The Mai-Kai replicated the menu design in great detail, from the distinctive logo to the familiar artwork of three cannibal tiki carvings. The wood grain and folding panels are meant to simulate the Mai-Kai’s original front doors. We don’t have a copy of the original menu, but images posted online during an eBay sale show virtually the same cover and inside layout from 1957:
The old tri-fold menu style was gone by the end of the 1970s, replaced by a bi-fold menu that remained in place (in varying sizes) until the 2020 closing. [See the 2018-2019 menu] Another classic feature is back on the new menu with a return to having the individual cocktails depicted by representational artwork.
The original artwork was replaced by photos in a 2014 menu overhaul. This was a major change from the original style used during the first 57 years of menus. But the old look is back, thanks to California artist Eric October.
Mai-Kai managing partner Bill Fuller reached out to October after seeing his botanical cocktail prints for sale online. The longtime Mai-Kai fan was hired to create the custom images using watercolor in the same style used on the original mid-century menus. Some of the cocktails have also been turned into T-shirts featuring the same artwork.
These images include more than just the signature mild, medium and strong rum drinks – plus the four non-alcoholic options. October also depicted the 12 new creations by Starr that fill out he 54-drink menu and offer alternatives for fans of other spirits (bourbon, tequila, et al.).
Diehard fans of Mai-Kai cocktails may notice a few missing from the latest menu. The Zula (which dates back to 1956) and Suffering Bastard (an off-menu classic added in 2018) have joined the ranks of retired cocktails. But Starr assures us that they’re not gone forever. He said he plans to bring back many on the list we originally dubbed the “lost cocktails” for limited appearances and special promotions.
Also not listed on the main menu due to space constraints are seven long-standing after-dinner drinks that had been featured on the previous large-format menu. But have no fear, a separate after-dinner menu is in the works and will be readily available at the Mai-Kai soon.
In the meantime, here’s a list of the drinks that should be available to order any time, not just after a meal.
After-dinner menu: Kona Coffee Grog, Hot Buttered Rum, Tahitian Coffee, Mai-Kai Cappuccino, Chocolate Snowflake, Mai-Kai Blizzard, Wahine Delight. Note that one classic after-drink has been retired: Gardenia Lei, a 1956 original.
That makes a total of 57 alcoholic cocktails on the new menus, the most ever offered. You can find detailed reviews, history and recipes for all of the drinks from 1956 through 2020 in our Mai-Kai Cocktail Guide at the links below:
• Mai-Kai cocktail rankings | All the drinks on the 2018-2020 menu
• Complete list of 100+ Mai-Kai recipes
We haven’t wasted any time diving into the new menu, tasting nearly all of the current drinks since Starr took over the cocktail program in September. We wholeheartedly praise his efforts in keeping the classics intact while also raising the bar in every way possible.
Using better spirits, fresher juices, and house-made syrups, Starr has ushered in a return to the traditions of master mixologist Mariano Licudine, who retired in 1979. The bartending legend built the Mai-Kai cocktail program after learning his craft (and many secret recipes still used today) at the Don the Beachcomber location in Chicago (1940-1955).
Our next story on the new menus will feature a discussion with Starr and deeper examination of the cocktails, both classic and new. In the meantime, you can continue to refer to our historic ratings for guidance.
Just know that several classics have been fine-tuned and enhanced, likely rising in the rankings when we update the guide. Among these are the Planter’s Punch, Pina Colada, Kona Coffee Grog and Hot Buttered Rum. So far, our favorites from Starr’s new cocktail lineup include the Paniolo Old Fashioned, Pinky Gonzalez, Tahitian Drum, and Tropical Itch.
Our plan is to hold off on reviews of any of the drinks – new and old – for a few months until the bars are operating at full efficiency and the bartenders have time to master the recipes. There’s also a good chance that the new Mai-Kai Rum No. 1 will be introduced in early 2025, further elevating many cocktails to dangerous levels. Look for more details on this proprietary 100-proof blend of Barbados and Jamaican rums, created by master distiller Don Benn at the West Indies Rum Distillery, in part 2 of this series.
The Mai-Kai also has an extensive wine menu. If you enjoy vino, ask your server. [See the menu]
• Click here to see the online cocktail menu at MaiKai.com
The food menus: A modern take with traditions intact
The cocktail menu isn’t the only stylistic time warp that greets guests when they sit down to order food and drinks at the restored and reimagined Mai-Kai. While most of the dishes have been modernized, the main dinner menu’s design harkens back to the 1956-57 original.
The cover features the familiar cannibal trio in an almost exact replica of the original artwork. Open the bi-fold menu and you’ll see a design and layout that replicates the vintage version, from the colors to the exact same artwork and fonts.
A lot has changed in the culinary world in the past 67 years, so you won’t find Chow Dun or Foo Yung dishes on the current menu. You will find the classic pupu platter, however, along with the same over-arching array of meat-forward “Polynesian-style” meals featuring chicken, seafood, beef, pork, and duck.
The new menu also caters to modern tastes with such contemporary offerings as noodle bowls, poke, bao buns, curry, and Pad Thai. It’s a creative and eclectic menu that takes inspiration from the classics but puts a decidedly au courant spin on things.
The Molokai Bar opened in 1958, but it likely did not have its own food menu until the early 1970s. That’s when the lounge area was expanded to its current 150 seats and received its distinctive nautical theme.
• Previous coverage: Inside the Molokai Bar and tour of the Mai-Kai restoration
Decor and set pieces from the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty were famously used to create one of the world’s most immersive and distinctive bars. But the expansion also added a small kitchen behind the Molokai’s behind-the-scenes service bar, allowing it to offer a stand-alone bar menu.
That kitchen is not yet operational, limiting the grand reopening offerings. But a distinctive Molokai menu was created for guests not only inside the bar, but also outside in the expansive new Bora Bora Bar. It was an ambitious challenge for the new main kitchen, which is smaller but much more modern than the old one lost in the 2020 roof collapse.
Chefs, line cooks, servers and food-runners have their hands full with as many as 300 diners in the showrooms, seated en masse, up to three times a night. On top of that, they also service both bars, which can easily seat another 200+ people at peak hours. When it opens, the Molokai kitchen will lessen that load.
Past Molokai food menus have come in all shapes and sizes, none featuring a distinct design. So for the 2024 reopening, the Mai-Kai turned to a familiar artist from the past who created some of the most memorable images of the bar.
The featured image is a reproduction of artwork from a vintage Molokai Bar advertisement by Al Kocab. The mid-century artist was on contract with the Mai-Kai, creating everything from ads to mugs to the furniture still used today in the Molokai and dining rooms. A Kocab rendering of the Mai-Kai adorns the cover of the 2012 book, Classic Dining: Discovering America’s Finest Mid-Century Restaurants by Peter Moruzzi.
Here’s the breaking news: Both food menus will soon be updated, manager Kern Mattei told us late last week. Look for updates to the dishes, not the design, early this month. Some under-performing items will be removed and new offerings added, among other adjustments, Mattei said.
It’s not unusual for menus to change in the early stages of a grand opening as chefs and kitchen staff get their footing and guests weigh in with their preferences. Since soft openings and the Nov. 15 start of sneak previews, we’ve had the opportunity to taste many of the items on both menus.
Among our favorites were:
• Appetizers: Pupu Platter, BBQ-Glazed Pork Ribs, Thai Coconut Curry Soup. Entrees: Thai Street Noodles, Hulu-Hulu BBQ Chicken, Panang Curry Chicken, Kona-Braised Short Ribs, Double Trouble Poke Bowl, Cheshire Pork Tomahawk, Mai-Kai Beef, American Wagyu Strip Steak. Desserts: Haupia Cocoa Puffs, Asian Pear Upside-Down Cake, Bread Pudding.
Note that several items have distinctive, spicy flavors and sauces, a change from less adventurous offerings of the past. A future story in this series will explore the updated menus in more detail, including a profile of the culinary team behind the ambitious new dishes.
• Menus at MaiKai.com: Appetizers | Entrees
The cannibal trio: Mai-Kai’s signature iconography
It’s no coincidence that the primitive imagery of three cannibal tiki figures became the iconic symbol of the Mai-Kai. The carvings were embraced by owners Bob and Jack Thornton, who “showed themselves as standard-bearers of the coming Tiki generation by adopting these figures as the Mai-Kai’s trademark,” author Sven Kirsten wrote in Tiki Pop: America Imagines Its Own Polynesian Paradise (Taschen, 2014).
• Past coverage: 10 reasons why you need Sven Kirsten’s Tiki Pop
The massive book, which chronicles the rise of Tiki culture in America from its early influences through the 20th century, was compiled as a compendium to an elaborate exhibit at a museum in Paris. The Tiki Pop exhibition ran at Musée du Quai Branly from June 24 to Sept. 28, 2014.
Not only did the Mai-Kai gets its own chapter in the book, the exhibit featured several items from the restaurant, including a vintage menu and an original painting by Al Kocab that hung in the back office for decades:
Kirsten shared an image from the exhibit that shows the three cannibal carvings on loan from a private collector, directly to the left of the painting (see above). His intent was to connect the dots between the primitive art and its use in the mid-century as Polynesian iconography at the Mai-Kai and elsewhere. He also displayed an actual Tahitian drum next to a Mai-Kai mug that draws inspiration from it.
In his 2016 book, Mai-Kai: History and Mystery of the Iconic Tiki Restaurant (Schiffer), Tim “Swanky” Glazner shared a photo that shows the cannibals atop the original streetside sign. A later image dated 1965 shows what appears to be a different trio on top of a new sign:
We got a rare look at the actual tikis that sat atop the original sign at The Hukilau event in 2008, when the Mai-Kai displayed rare items from its archives. The tikis, whose survival can be attributed to them being cast in cement, were arranged in the classic order:
In his book, Kirsten identifies the carvings as “the Catcher,” “the Eater” and “the Sated.” They often appear in this traditional sequence, but not always. “They’re called cannibal carvings because they depict the process of catching, devouring and digesting a human victim,” Kirsten later explained in a presentation on the distinctive idols.
The author is considered to be the foremost authority on what he calls Polynesian Pop, the mid-century embrace by Americans of exotic South Seas culture. Kirsten’s other books include The Book of Tiki (2000) and Tiki Modern (2007). At the Mai-Kai’s 60th anniversary event in 2016, he showed images and discussed “The Tahitian Cannibal Carvings: The Logo Tikis of the Mai-Kai.”
In the presentation, Kirsten surmised that years before he opened the first Don the Beachcomber restaurant, Ernest Raymond Gantt (who later changed his name to Donn Beach) first came across the cannibals in Tahiti or Bora Bora in the 1920s during his travels. But even then, they may have simply been mass-produced souvenir “tourist tikis” created for visitors like Gantt.
Kirsten wondered if the cannibal trio was simply “an ancient concept that got lost and was never recorded, and only survived in souvenir form.” For the record, he added, cannibalism never existed in Tahiti, though there was human sacrifice. It was practiced in the nearby Marquesas Islands, however. This is why the carvings are done in a Marquesan style, he added.
“When tourism started taking off in Tahiti in the 1920s, a lot of Marquesan tiki carvers migrated to Tahiti because they could sell their carvings there,” Kirsten said. They should really be called the Marquesas cannibal carvings, he said. “The Tahitians didn’t really have figural representations of their gods, but the Marquesans did.”
The first Don the Beachcomber opened in Hollywood in 1932, decorated with artifacts Gantt/Beach collected during travels to the South Seas. An old photo shows the cannibals displayed behind the bar. He was reportedly smitten by the carvings, but rarely used them for promotional purposes. One of the few instances is a 1941 menu, where you can find them on a map of the South Pacific just above Bora Bora (see image above).
The Thornton brothers were no doubt influenced in many ways by the Don the Beachcomber restaurant in their hometown of Chicago, which inspired them to open the Mai-Kai. They hired many key members of the staff, from manager Bob Van Dorpe to mixologist Mariano Licudine.
Among the Chicago restaurant’s many themed areas was the Cannibal Room, which featured the trio of tikis that the Thorntons likely encountered during their visits in the 1940s and ’50s. The Thorntons went on to become even more avid collectors of South Seas artifacts than Beach, filling the Mai-Kai with rare pieces from their travels. Many remain in the restaurant, while others were so valuable they ended up in museum collections.
In his presentation, Kirsten called the cannibal trio “the jovial poster boys of the early Mai-Kai” and the “no-see, no-hear, no-speak monkeys of Tiki style.” The Thornton brothers were not alone. Many others adopted the same cannibal concept, most notably Steve Crane and his Kon-Tiki chain (est. 1958).
As Kirsten explained, the Mai-Kai was part of a second wave of Polynesian restaurants, and the first to embrace the tiki figure as an icon and use it in promotional materials. The cannibal trio appeared not only on the sign and front doors, but also on staff clothing, menus, matchbooks, coasters and all manner of merchandise. “The Thorntons used the tiki imagery to advertise their place and to bring across the Polynesian concept,” he said.
In addition to the menus, the cannibals have been resurrected spectacularly in three dimensions by South Florida carver Tom Fowner, whose previous work includes one of the three carvings installed in 2016 under the porte-cochère. Fowner also carved and created the new signature bench inside the lobby near the restrooms, a new hot spot for photo ops.
The cannibals are strategically positioned to be seen as you leave the parking lot via the new themed driveway, lit up at night and holding a sign with the greeting “Mahalo a hui hou” (which means “thank you and until we meet again” in Hawaiian). They stand on the north side of the giant banyan trees, not far from the modern trio inside the Bora Bora Bar.
If you use rideshare, you can admire Fowner’s work while you wait for your pick-up in the nearby seating area. That work took place over the course of a few short weeks in late summer as the Mai-Kai was abuzz with activity surrounding its massive restoration project.
Fowner found a nice quiet spot in the parking lot and pitched a small tent for shade as he created the tikis using the tools of his trade: chainsaw and grinder. It’s hard to find specific records on this, but it’s believed to be the first-ever large carving project done on the property. Most of the previous tikis had been carved elsewhere, then delivered to the Mai-Kai.
I first spotted Fowner carving the Florida cypress logs during a visit on Sept. 13. “This is going to be a fun carving, that’s for sure,” he told me. By Sept. 19, Fowner had just finished all the smoothing work and the trio was ready for painting and sealing.
They now join a long line of carvings at the Mai-Kai, the first new appearance of the signature cannibal trio since the early days of the restaurant.
It’s also worth checking out the gift shop, where you may find new merchandise featuring the cannibal carvings, including new T-shirts. Meanwhile, in likely the most modern use ever of the Tahitian cannibals, the trio is featured front and center on the new MaiKai.com website:
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